Surrender to Love (4 page)

“Well, I thank God for small blessings.” Joe’s eyes widened when Lilly returned to the dining room carrying trays of bacon and sausages.

Robin’s eyes widened at the delicious sight, and she had to wonder if heaven smelled this wonderful.

“I swear, Lilly, you’re some competition when it comes to my Joe’s affections.” An older woman joined the group.

Lilly laughed.

Joe’s face darkened with embarrassment. “Ah, Rosie. You know that you’re the only one for me.” He encircled her in his arms and planted a brief kiss against her cheek.

Robin smiled.

“Yuck.” Bobbi made a face at the couple. “I wish you two would give people a warning before you start doing that in public.”

“Bobbi,” both Carson and Lilly snapped.

“Sorry,” Bobbi mumbled under her breath, then poured milk into her cereal bowl before returning her attention to Robin. “So how old are you, anyway?”

Robin thought about not answering, but decided that her mother would always want her to be polite. “Eight.”

Bobbi nodded as if giving her approval. “Me, too.” She eyed her a bit longer through mouthfuls of cereal. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“You sure do ask a lot of questions,” Robin said, annoyed. She wasn’t sure that she even liked the girl.

Bobbi only smiled. “Last time I checked, it was the only way to really get to know a person.”

Robin figured the girl had a smart answer for everything.

Lilly placed a plate of pancakes topped with butter and syrup in front of Robin. “Eat up.”

More people filtered into the room, all of them praising Lilly’s cooking. For the most part, Robin enjoyed meeting Joe, Rosie, Albert, Dotty and Pierce. But she also met some overly made-up woman named Sheri Higginbotham—who apparently had the hots for Bobbi’s dad, Carson.

Robin immediately didn’t like her.

“G
ood morning,” Paul greeted Tony in the cafeteria while simultaneously reaching into a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. “I hope you slept well, because we have a full day ahead of us.”

Tony, not known for being a morning person, merely grunted and headed over to the coffeepot.

“I got us an appointment to meet with Virginia Jacobson in about—” he glanced at his watch “—twenty minutes.”

“All right,” Tony conceded, and continued to pour his coffee the way he liked it: black, no sugar. “I thought you were making me lead investigator on this case.”

“I am, but I want to hear what Newman’s ex-partner has to say. The pressure is always hard whenever we lose an agent. So I hope you don’t mind my playing tag on this one.”

“Of course not,” Tony replied, but his gruff voice belied his answer.

Paul bit into his breakfast and shook the sugary flakes from his blue suit. “These things are wonderful, but messy.”

“Have you ever thought about actually eating something with nutritional value?” Tony asked, shaking his head. “I swear, my arteries clog just watching you eat.”

“I see you woke up on the wrong side of the bed again.” Paul shoved the remainder of his doughnut into his mouth with a dramatic flare and chased it with coffee.

“It’s not that. I just wish that you would take better care of yourself.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Paul said, suddenly conscious of the extra twenty pounds sagging around his middle. It was a stark contrast to Tony’s well-chiseled body.

Come rain, snow, or shine, Tony usually rose well before the sun to run six miles and pump weights. And very rarely did anything unhealthy enter his mouth. At times, Paul admired the man’s discipline, but at others, he resented it.

“Back to our case. Do you know if the last body at the morgue has been identified yet?” Tony asked.

“That’s a big negative. Of course, it’s going to be kind of hard to do. According to Dr. O’Brien, a good portion of the man’s face was blown off.”

“Ouch.”

“You’re telling me. What a lousy way to go. Anyway, they’re running prints and dental records. We should have something soon.”

“Exactly what time did you get in here this morning?”

“About the same time you finished your second mile, sport.” He reached for another doughnut.

Tony smiled. “Any more news from the crime lab?”

“Nope. But the morning is still young.”

Frankie’s patience thinned. He’d searched the Kelleys’ residence from top to bottom and had come up empty, not counting the dead body in the bathroom. He’d never been a
man to stare into the mirror of regret; Frankie simply focused his attention elsewhere: Julia Kelley.

He glanced at his watch, then eyeballed the black Camry parked in the garage. No doubt the good doctor had fled town. He was just puzzled about how.

“All right, Frankie,” he counseled himself. “Maybe the lady has another car.” He rubbed his chin as he thought about that for a moment. “It’s a strong possibility.”

The problem now was uncovering what kind of vehicle it was and discovering its location. “This job isn’t without its share of challenges,” he mumbled.

A low shrill emanated from his coat pocket, and he retrieved his cell phone and answered in a curt tone, “Talk to me.”

“Frankie, Frankie. Me and the boys here have been waiting for your call. What’s going on down there in the Old South?”

Frankie shook his head and struggled to keep his irritation out of his voice. “Uncle Vinny, you know how I feel about talking business over cell phones.”

“Ah, we know, but what can I say? We were getting a little worried. It’s not like you not to check in.”

“Then consider this my check-in and I’ll call you later.” Frankie cursed under his breath and disconnected from the call. This was his first job with his uncle since his fiasco on the Dunaway case back in ’98. He’d refused to blow up Mitchell Dunaway’s car while he drove his wife and children to the JFK airport. He drew the line at harming children.

But before he had another opportunity at Dunaway, the explosives had been discovered under his car. Vinny was not a happy man at the missed opportunity, and as a result Frankie had lost favor with his powerful uncle.

This time he wouldn’t fail.

He jerked at the sound of a car pulling up into the driveway;
then seconds later a horn blared. Curious, he reentered the house and moved toward the closest window to stare out.

A pale blue Chrysler minivan was parked out front, and from what he could see, a middle-aged blonde, complete with fancy sunglasses and a thin cigarette, peered up at the house, then laid on the horn again.

Frankie shook his head. Didn’t women know how unattractive smoking made them? He watched her as she then reached into her purse and scribbled something on a notepad. When she finished, she handed the note to someone in the back.

The van’s side door swooshed back and a miniature image of the driver jumped out and bounded up the stairs toward the house to place the note in the door.

After the mother and daughter had driven off, Frankie went to the door and quickly retrieved the note. It read, “Julia, came by to take Robin to ballet and there was no answer. Call me later—Nancy.”

Frankie shrugged. So the little princess missed ballet class. Big deal. Convinced that he’d learned all he could in the Kelleys’ home, he tried to think whether he had a contact down at the Department of Motor Vehicles. He needed to know whether the Kelleys owned another car.

He scratched his head when he couldn’t quite dig up the buried info—but he knew he would eventually. And he would find the doctor as well; he had no doubt about that.

Virginia Jacobson was a beautiful African-American woman whose smooth complexion gave her the appearance of a thirty-year-old, but her eyes told a different story, and Paul guessed her age to be in the mid-forties.

She welcomed her colleagues into her office with a sweep of her hand. “Please come in.”

Paul’s observant gaze swept over the immaculate office.

“I’m glad you came by to see me this morning. I was kind of anxious to meet with you both to see how you’re coming along in the investigation.” Her intense gaze swung between them.

“Actually, we’re working with very little,” Tony informed her in a tone of regret.

She nodded slightly as she moved behind her desk. “Walt has already been by this morning questioning me about Newman. All I know is that he and Pittman went to check out a claim from an anonymous caller.” She reached for the blue folder on her desk and started rattling off information. “On May twenty-seventh we received a call from a woman who claimed to have information on a felon listed on our Most Wanted list. She’d seen his picture posted in a local postal office, but she wasn’t one hundred percent sure that it was the same guy. To make matters worse, she suspected the man was her ex-husband.”

Paul frowned. “So what—Newman went to check this claim?”

Virginia nodded. “We arranged for the woman to bring her husband to an open place so we could try to get a positive ID on him.

“I was supposed to go with him, but I got called away on a family emergency, and Newman asked Pittman to go in my place. It was supposed to be a simple job. We go in, try to make an ID, then a possible arrest.”

Tony and Paul exchanged puzzled looks.

Virginia expelled a sigh of frustration. “I keep thinking that my partner might be alive if I had gone to that mall instead of Pittman. I mean, Walt’s a nice guy and all, and he usually works as a part of our team, but I was Rodney’s partner.”

Paul nodded. “I think Walt is battling his own demons over what happened.”

“I know,” she said. “But I can’t help the way I feel.”

Paul wanted to say something encouraging. “We’ll get who’s behind all of this. Trust me.”

Virginia met Paul’s steady gaze. A glimmer of sadness crept into her eyes, but her composure remained intact.

“I want to help you guys on this. I know that, technically, it’s your case, but he was my partner—and my friend. Let me help.”

Paul admired her loyalty. “We welcome your assistance.”

When she smiled, Paul was not unaffected.

Robin finished her breakfast, convinced that she’d never tasted pancakes as good as Ms. Lilly’s.

Bobbi, meanwhile, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and jumped up from the table. “We’d better get going if we’re going to make it to the ballpark in time.”

Robin got up.

“And I’ll make sure I point out Stanley Forrester to you. You have to watch him. He thinks that girls have cooties or something.”

“Ah, don’t let that worry you none,” Sheri Higginbotham drew her attention away from Carson long enough to comment. “Boys grow out of that nonsense soon enough. Isn’t that right, Carson?” She batted her eyes.

Robin frowned. “Is there something in your eyes?”

The adults snickered.

Robin sensed that she had said something wrong and clamped her mouth shut.

“Weren’t you two leaving?” Sheri snapped with her eyes flashing.

Carson, still smiling, stood from the table. “I think I’ll come with you girls, I want to see my baby pitch.”

“Dad, I’m not a baby,” Bobbi whined.

“You’re
my
baby,” he said firmly, but his eyes twinkled.

At that moment, Robin thought that Bobbi was the luckiest girl in the world. It was obvious her father cared a great deal about her. When was the last time her father had attended her dance recitals? Of course, David was her stepfather. She’d never known her real father. She’d only seen old pictures of him that were stuffed in her mother’s closet. His name was Kevin Henderson.

Her mother never wanted to talk about him, but it hadn’t stopped Robin from wondering what her real father was like. One time she’d caught her mother crying while holding an old wedding picture, and Robin had the feeling that she missed him.

So did Robin, if it was possible to miss someone you couldn’t remember.

Of course, there was David.

Robin hung her head guiltily. She’d never really cared for her stepfather, though he’d never actually done anything to her. But he’d always seemed to make her mother cry. When her mother told her of their divorce, it hadn’t come as much of a shock, as her mother had feared. In some ways it was more of a relief. Now Robin wondered if this sudden road trip had something to do with another one of David’s hateful threats. He was always making those; maybe this time he’d actually scared her mother. Maybe that was why her mother was acting so strangely.

“You two ready?” Carson asked.

Bobbi slapped a baseball cap on her head and beamed up at her father. “Ready when you are. Come on, Robin.”

Robin hesitated.

“Go on,” Lilly encouraged. “I’ll tell your mom where you are.”

It wasn’t that, Robin wanted to say. It was that she really wasn’t in the mood for watching baseball. She almost preferred
to watch grass grow. But given the looks on Mr. Webber’s and his daughter’s faces, she knew she couldn’t let them down.

She took a deep breath. “All right.” It wasn’t as though she had anything else to do, anyway, she reasoned.

Tony followed Paul to his office. Each was submerged in his own private thoughts when Special Agent Larry Evans rushed up to them.

“There you guys are. I’ve been looking for you all over the place.”

“What’s up, Larry?” Paul asked with a frown.

“We got an ID on the last body down at the morgue. You’ll never guess in a million years who it is.”

“Try me.”

“Eric Mercer.”

The name seemed vaguely familiar to Paul, but in the end he drew a blank.

Tony, on the other hand, snapped his fingers. “Wasn’t there an Eric and David Mercer on the Most Wanted list?” He looked to Paul for confirmation. “I believe they’re wanted for racketeering, extortion and possibly murder.”

“Possibly?” Larry asked. “Try eighteen counts. And yes, they’ve been on our list for the last decade. Not to mention, the Montello Mafia has contracts out for both of them. Last I heard the price was two million.”

In sync, Paul and Tony emitted a low whistle.

“And that’s per head,” Larry added, crossing his arms and rocking on his heels. “They apparently double-crossed them on something, and the Montellos are carrying a grudge.”

“So what are we looking at—the mall shooting was an execution by the Montellos?”

“We shouldn’t rule it out,” Larry said.

“What in the hell was Eric doing there?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Larry patted Paul’s shoulder as he moved away. “Seems like you two have one hell of a case on your hands.”

“This case is getting stranger by the minute,” Tony commented, closing Paul’s office door.

Paul made his way behind his desk.

“What are you thinking?” Tony asked.

“About what Virginia Jacobson said.”

“She didn’t really say much.”

“True. But remember she said something about the phone call her partner had received?”

Tony thought for a moment. “Something about a frantic call from a woman and something she had seen about her husband.”

Paul nodded. “She had seen her husband’s picture posted somewhere.”

“Are you thinking that there is a Mrs. Eric or David Mercer out there?”

“Not unless the Mercers had her silenced by now. But frankly, I think it fits our puzzle.”

The men stared at each other before Tony asked, “You think it was a hit by the Montellos, then?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“Then where is David Mercer?”

“Now
that
I would love to know.”